


Come here

by Laura_Sinele



Series: Fictober 2020 [1]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Armitage Hux Has Feelings, Banter, Canon Related, Canon-Typical Violence, Crash Landing, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Falling In Love, Fictober, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, M/M, Post-Canon, Protective Kylo Ren, Sharing a Bed, There were TWO beds, Wilderness Survival, but nights were cold, cut right before the smut, sorry this was already way much longer than expected
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-01
Updated: 2020-10-01
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:42:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26772376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laura_Sinele/pseuds/Laura_Sinele
Summary: The First Order is losing the Final Battle, and General Hux is willing to die in it. Kylo Ren disagrees and forces him out of harm's way, only to have them crash into an isolated, barely populated planet. They will need to learn to cooperate if they want to survive their wounds and the wilderness, and reach civilisation.
Relationships: Armitage Hux/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Armitage Hux/Kylo Ren
Series: Fictober 2020 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1951714
Comments: 8
Kudos: 65
Collections: Fictober20





	Come here

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Tumblr event Fictober, prompt 1: 'No, come back!'
> 
> I wanted to play with repetition and context, and I also wanted to keep it short and succinct. I don't think I've managed my second resolution but well, it's Kylux being in love, which is always a win.

**The first**

Fleeing. Leaving the ship at the height of the final battle. Like rats. Like filthy,  _ cowardly  _ vermin. 

He shook himself off the grip Ren had over his left elbow, turned around and ran, stopping only to grab the first discarded blaster he found on the durasteel floor of the hangar. 

‘No, come back!’, grunted Ren, limping after him, with his suddenly free hand clutched at his wounded side, and his ignited lightsaber as his only cover from the shots raining on him from the upper levels. His injured leg gave up and he fell on one knee, groaning and cursing under his breath. ‘Hux!’, he warned at the top of his lungs as he raised his hand towards him. If they lingered any longer there would be no shuttles left for them. ‘Come. BACK!’

Hux felt the pull of the Force on all his limbs but he still tried to fight it. His ship was going down and he would be damned if he didn’t fall with it. A trickle of blood fell down his nose and his vision became blurry. He still pushed further, but the next thing his senses registered was the blood soaked, sweat drenched fabric over Ren’s shoulder. The audacity of an unstable manchild to carry a General of the First Order as if he were a parcel to deliver. He punched the wound on Ren’s side in retaliation, and Ren dropped him, stifling a cry of pain. Hux hit his head hard against the floor and needed a few seconds to gather himself together, but before he could, a blaster shot grazed his right cheekbone and Ren dragged him into cover, under a diplomatic shuttle.

‘Let me go! Let me go, you pathetic monk, this is my ship, this is my war! Either I win it or I fall in the name of the First Order!’

‘War is over, Hux! We lost and nobody is going to appreciate your petty sacrifice. The only place you’re going is on board this shuttle!’

Hux remained silent under the thunderous sounds around them. Then he dived off cover only to be dragged back under the shuttle by his collar. 

‘Let me go, brainless brute, let me go!’

‘I’m trying to save your life here, Hux!’

‘This is  _ my  _ life!’, Hux replied with an all-encompassing arm gesture. ‘This is where I belong, this is what I was trained for! To die for the First Order!’

Ren put out his saber and punched Hux in the face. Hux punched back without missing a bit. They rolled over one another under their last chance to flee, hitting and ducking, pinning down and wriggling out the other’s grip until an explosion louder than the others stopped them. Ren punched Hux one last time and left him there, working his senses out of the concussion, while he checked the shuttle for damage. One engine was down, but there were still three more and the back up. And this was the only vehicle left. It was now or never. 

While Ren pulled the access oppen, he saw Hux stalk towards a formation of rebels with only one battered blaster. He took four of them down and only got one hit on his shoulder. He was yelling like a madman at the other two. Ren was dizzy due to the blood loss, but still managed to break both the rebels necks and seize Hux before he could run any further. 

Kicking and thrashing, caught in Ren’s arm by his throat, Hux was forced into defection, up aboard a damaged shuttle and out in space. 

* * *

**The second**

A crash landing had been their best prospect. They should have been grateful to do so on a life compatible planet. Even more, one that was small and boring enough to not be in either the First Order’s nor the New Republic’s prospective annexions. Considering one engine, most of the fuel and a good part of the navigation system had been lost in the blast back in the hangar, they should be really, deeply, very grateful. Ren was, of course. And, of course, Hux wasn’t. 

‘Have you been in many battles, Ren? Not aerial, not planetary scale battles, not even those incursions you used to lead planetside, with a whole platoon and your knights against a bunch of scared farmers and maybe fifteen rebels. I’m talking about pitched battles, inside a ship or on a battlefield’. While he talked, borderline deranged and still bleeding after almost two cycles because he wouldn’t let Ren tend his wounds, Ren was packing all the supplies and useful items he could find on the shuttle, plus some of the shuttle parts, to Hux never to be outwardly acknowledged puzzlement. ‘Those battles are sheer, unbridled chaos of which not even your mystical capabilities can aspire to make sense of. It might look like victory and turn out into defeat. It might feel like utter loss and become the most glorious triumph…’

‘We were losing, ingrate. We would have died. No glory, no posterity, only the void’.

‘You don’t know, you cannot know!’, screeched Hux, completely gone now. 

‘You’re right! I should have let you die! I should have let you think you were making the ultimate sacrifice only to discover that death for you would be no more than eternal nothingness. I should have let us both die! At least  _ I  _ would have lived forever in the Force. That I do know’, he spat, and he walked past Hux, into the forest that surrounded them. 

‘No, come back!’, yelled Hux at Ren’s back. ‘If you were going to leave me here stranded and wounded you could have let me be! Why are you running away now, you coward?!’

Ren’s footsteps stopped and began anew, coming closer, until he was again in Hux’s sight.

‘Make up your mind, General. What is it going to be? Death or life?’

‘I’m not a General anymore. You made me a defector’.

‘I saved your miserable life’.

‘I was willing to die’.

‘It wasn’t worth it!’

‘It was my choice!’

They stared at each other, panting furiously but too tired to start yet another screaming match. 

‘I gave you a choice, Hux. I could have simply ordered you to come with me using the Force. You would have complied and we would have gotten into the shuttle before the enemy hit it’.

‘Should I thank you for your magnanimity? Why didn’t you do that, then?’, Hux replied disdainfully. 

‘Because you couldn’t have fought back. There would have been no chance at all for you to overpower me. It would have saved time and at least three of your wounds, but if I had taken away your chance to fight back you would have hated me forever’. 

Ren turned around and resumed his walk into the forest, leaving Hux perplexed and speechless. The moment Ren disappeared from his sight, Hux followed his steps. 

* * *

**The third**

Ren had only stopped when he had found a water spring that he had deemed acceptable. Hux had followed him silently, regretting painfully his earlier refusal to let Ren see to his wounds. They were all superficial, except for that last blaster shot in his shoulder, but even that one wasn’t worrisome. However, there were a lot of them, open and bleeding, not counting the bruises all over his body and several head concussions. Hux was tired, weak and lost, and he fell face first into the water stream once Ren had checked its composition and nodded approvingly. 

They had no way of knowing when it would be night, so they set a tent. Ren spread the shuttle parts in front of it, brought a set of tools out of the enormous pack he had been carrying, and asked Hux to help him turn that mess into a transmissor, a navigator and a light-powered heater. Probably having extinguished his ability to be any more puzzled by Ren, Hux sat down to work immediately, without a word. 

It was all done and working when the night came. They ate their rations in silence, having only spoken the bare minimum to coordinate their small engineering project. When he was done, Ren set the heater inside the tent and came back out with the first-aid kit and a lantern. He did not ask and Hux did not resist. He let Ren help him take off the outer layers of his uniform and clean and stitch and apply bacta on every open gash and pulsing bruise. Once he finished tending Hux’s wounds, Ren seemed about to say something. Hux stood up and took his dirty clothes with him to wash them under the water stream. When he returned, Ren had picked up everything and retired into the tent. Where Hux had been sitting there was a standard issue set of fatigues. He dressed up in them and entered the tent. 

‘It seems the heater hasn’t had enough daylight time to charge properly’, said Hux. 

‘Let’s hope it’s not a long night, then’, replied Ren from his cot. He had his eyes closed and his arms under his head, as a pillow. His chest was bare, the blanket only covering half his torso. Hux found himself terrified with the prospect of Ren dying of pneumonia. 

‘How many hours?’

‘Couldn’t check before the computer died’.

‘Let’s hope it’s not a long night then’, Hux mimicked before lying on his cot and closing his eyes. 

Hux woke up to the chatter of teeth. He thought they were his own, but that was only one half of it. At his right, the shaking form of Ren was emitting the same sound. Half asleep and having automatized most of his responses to critical situations since his time as a cadet, Hux dragged himself up and then down on Ren’s cot, under Ren’s blanket, draping himself around him before he could spare a thought about it and rapidly dozing off again.

After a while he woke up again to Ren’s uneasy stirring. He lifted his head to meet Ren’s inquisitive eyes. 

‘You were cold’, Hux said succinctly, and proceeded to crawl back to his bed. 

‘No, come back’, Ren mumbled. Hux complied.

‘You should put something on’.

‘The standard issue clothes don’t fit’, explained Ren groggily. 

‘Then you’ll have to wash your clothes and walk around naked until they dry off’.

Why had he felt the urge to point the obvious, Hux had absolutely no idea. He was inclined to blame the dire situation they had been through, still going through. But before he could think too much about it he was surprised by the sound of a chuckle. Lord Kylo Ren found the idea of his own forced nudity amusing. Who would have thought? Certainly not Hux. 

* * *

**The fourth and fifth and the end of it**

‘Be realistic, Lord Ren’, Hux said mockingly. It was sunset and they were sitting near the edge of a cliff, overlooking a small housing compound surrounded by rudimentary crop fields. The first they had found since their crash. Hux stood up to emphasize his point. ‘We reach civilization and then what? We buy a farm and live there until we die? Is that the life you want?’.

They had stopped counting around their fiftieth day stranded. Rations finished, patience extinguished more times that can be counted, and many nights curling up together in the same cot, sharing their only two blankets and their body heat. They had had a similar conversation several times. Usually, when it got to this point, Ren kept quiet and Hux dropped the subject. This time, maybe because he could actually see farms far below, Ren answered. 

‘Yes’. 

Hux appeared visibly baffled. He looked around. Then he looked down at the farms and fields. 

‘Why?’

‘Sit down, Hux’

Hux did not move except to look at him inquisitively.

‘Sit down. You might want to kill me when I tell you this, and my odds are better if you are sitting close to me than if you’re standing far enough to gain momentum and tackle me’.

With a stifled laugh, testament to the effect survival in the wilderness had had in the way they behaved around each other, Hux did as he was told.

‘What is it?’

‘During my last meeting with Snoke he taunted me. He mocked me, which wasn’t unusual, but he said something while doing so that made me stop wanting to kill you and want to kill him instead’.

‘I already knew it was you who killed Snoke’, said Hux, remembering the moment he found the aftermath of the assassination and was too slow to kill Ren, the thought of it somehow revolting now. 

‘You didn’t know that it was me who passed information to the rebels, though’. 

Hux punched Ren in the face out of principle. Then he asked himself why did he care that much. Ren groaned, covering his jaw with one hand, and spit a bloodied phlegm.

‘I was used, Hux. Same as you. We had both been fed lies, promised greatness, when it was nothing more than a lightyears long charade. I  _ had  _ to take it down and I felt like I owed you to get you out of there after all those years mortifying you. I felt like it would be my fault if you died believing that the Order had ever cared about you’.

Hux punched him again. Ren stood up breathing in furiously and pointed at him with a menacing finger only to disappear inside the tent. 

‘No, come back! This conversation is not finished!’, said Hux as he followed him inside. ‘You destroyed my way of life, you caused the deaths of millions of people. You’re a traitor! And now you want a quiet life on a farm?’

‘I didn’t betray the Order, the Order betrayed me. You didn’t defect when I brought you along, the Order had already abandoned you. The High Command wanted a scapegoat and Snoke wanted a punching bag for me. That’s it. That’s your military career’.

‘You’re lying’.

‘You wish I was lying. You were brilliant, yes, but that was a threat for them, so they promoted you quickly and put you near me in hopes that we would keep each other under control, that if one of us went rogue, the other would take care of it. But it’s over! I killed those who used us and hurt us. I have no allegiance, no family, no master and no purpose, because I got rid of all those myself. The only one that I didn’t kill was the one they expected me to. And you ask me what I want to do now, if I want to farm this land or take the next merchant ship out of here? Well, I don’t know and I don’t care, as long as you come with me. You’re the only one I left alive because you’re the only one that matters’.

Hux’s face didn’t betray any emotion at all, because there were too many to choose from. After a while looking at each other in silence, bodies vibrating with tension, Hux crawled out of the tent and Ren followed him immediately. 

‘No’, said Ren, ‘now  _ you  _ come back! This conversation isn’t finished yet!’.

Hux picked a sizable stick and smashed it repeatedly against a fungal formation from which they had collected their dinner. When the stick broke, he used his fists, yelling all the while he destroyed something alive, useful and beautiful. When he stopped, he was on his knees, breathing heavily, hands running up and down his thighs over his worn fatigues. 

‘So you have determined that spending the rest of our lives farming in an underdeveloped planet is our best bet?’

‘Not necessarily that, but yes. Why not? As long as they’re  _ our  _ lives and not anybody else’s gambit. As long as they’re yours and mine’.

Hux looked at Ren for a moment, distrust and confusion wrestling inside him. 

‘Have you heard yourself? You sound like a cheap romance hero trying to propose in the vaguest way possible’.

It had been meant to be disdainful, exasperated. It had been meant to insult the ominous, mystical, wrath driven Kylo Ren. For a split of a second, Ren looked outraged. Then he tilted his head to the side, giving Hux an appraising look.

‘Have you watched many cheap romances?’

‘No, actually I have  _ read  _ many of them’, replied Hux conversationally, all fury gone in his previous fit of destruction. He found that he didn’t care anymore about his prospects of grandeur and galaxy-wide dominance. He just wanted an actual bed to sleep in, and blame on the habit the fact that he pictured Ren in it too. 

Amused, Ren cocked an eyebrow at Hux.

‘If I am the hero, what am I supposed to do next?’

Hux laughed. 

‘Why do you care? Do you really want to lift me up and kiss me passionately while the sun sets?’

‘I don’t think I could get away with both. Either if I pick you up or I kiss you, you’ll probably try to strangle me’.

Hux nodded and turned to watch the sunset. He willed himself calm as he heard Ren’s approaching steps on the topsoil. 

‘I don’t think I should be the hero, either. We have split up evenly the heroic deeds so far, I believe’.

Very carefully, without moving a iota, with a studied touch of boredom in his voice, Hux mumbled:

‘So what, do you want me to lift you up and kiss you in the sunset?’

Ren said nothing for a while and a hot shame washed over Hux. He took a long breath in and prepared to dismiss that whole conversation, but when he looked at Ren he was looking back in the purple-ish light, his messy hair falling on his face, loose strands dancing in the gentle breeze. It was all too much like a cheap romance indeed, and Hux’s knees felt inconveniently unstable. 

‘I’m just saying’, whispered Ren, ‘there is not much sunset left’. 

With his brow knit, slowly, temptatively, Hux took a step closer and raised his hands to cradle Ren’s face. Ren closed his eyes at the touch, almost relieved, and Hux rested his forehead on Ren’s temple. They stood there, dead still, counting heartbeats, until Hux softly spoke again:

‘Come here’, he said.

And they kissed. 

  
  



End file.
